EDITORIAL: Amendment math makes votes for governor vital

There’s a lot at stake — especially for Democrats — in the November general election. But not for reasons you may think.

Tennessee voters chose by about 3-1 to vote on the Republican primary ballot in August. But the 225,617 voters who chose the Democratic ballot named Charles V. “Charlie” Brown as the Democratic nominee for governor.

Perhaps it was the familiar “Charlie Brown” name, or maybe it was just the advantage of the alphabet and his name was first on the list of largely unknown candidates. It certainly was not because of any campaigning that Charles V. “Charlie” Brown waged, because the total sum of his campaigning was to get 25 names on a petition to run for office and the creation of a Facebook page with his first name misspelled.

Slate.com called Brown “Tennessee’s accidental Democratic nominee for governor, a 72-year-old hunter who didn’t do any campaigning.”

Slate writer Caleb Hannan writes that Brown told him on election night as vote totals came in that the Lord asked him to run for higher office, and he did. But he didn’t respond to any requests for pre-election interviews and he didn’t even put up a sign in his own yard because, “I don’t believe in them.”

Most political pundits are blaming the Democrats for not being able to field “viable” candidates. ...

But back to the “lot at stake” thought.

As the The Tennessean’s Michael Cass pointed out last week, skipping the governor vote because Haslam has so many advantages (incumbency, name at top of ballot, and a real platform) could cheat Democrats of a say on constitutional amendments.

The fewer votes in the governor’s race means it will take fewer votes to pass an amendment to remove abortion protections from our Constitution or an amendment to inject politics into judicial nominations. That’s because a constitutional amendment must receive a majority of the number of votes cast in the gubernatorial election, no matter how many people vote on the amendment.

Democrats, don’t sit this one out. Four ballot measures, all significant changes proposed to our state Constitution, are certified for the Nov. 4 statewide election in Tennessee: